Autauga man gets jail time on public corruption conviction

PRATTVILLE – An Autauga County man will spend 30 days in jail following his public corruption conviction.

Mack Cell Harmon, 71, of Autaugaville was sentenced Wednesday in Autauga County Circuit Court to 30 days in the Autauga Metro Jail. Judge John Bush sentenced Harmon to 31 months in prison for using his public office for personal gain. He suspended that sentence and ordered Harmon to spend the 30 days in the county jail, followed by 18 months supervised probation.

Harmon was convicted July 10. The ethics charge is a felony. Harmon's ethics conviction is a Class B felony, with a punishment range of two to 20 years in prison.

In an interesting turn, Bush dropped Harmon's misdemeanor theft conviction, ruling the statute of limitations had run out.

George Walthall Jr., Harmon's attorney, pounced on that fact after the sentencing proceedings were over.

"If the court has ruled that no crime, the theft, has occurred, how can Mack be guilty of using his office for personal gain?" Walthall said in the hallway. "I plan to file an immediate appeal, seeking an overturning of the felony conviction."

Before the sentence was handed down, Harmon addressed the court.

"If what we did was wrong, I apologize to you," Harmon told Bush. "I didn't know it was wrong. I'm sorry the way things went. I thought I was doing the right thing."

Harmon is a co-defendant in a long-running Autaugaville Volunteer Fire Department public corruption case being investigated by the Alabama attorney general's office. The jury found that while serving in a leadership post within the department, Harmon stole a $1,000 donation that had been made to the department. The money had been paid back before his trial, courthouse records show.

Walthall argued during the trial that Harmon used a portion of the money to reimburse himself for uniforms and other equipment he purchased for the department out of his own pocket.

The grand jury last November initially indicted Harmon on the felony ethics charge, along with felony theft and felony theft by deception charges. During the trial, while outside the presence of the jury, Bush dropped the theft by deception charge and downgraded the theft count to a misdemeanor. The felony ethics charge remained.

Danny Chavers, former Autauga County Commission chairman, pleaded guilty in March to two felony counts of using his public office for personal gain and three felony theft charges. He resigned from the commission in 2013, ahead of the grand jury indictments being handed down. The charges stemmed from Chavers time as fire chief of the Autaugaville Volunteer Fire Department and as superintendent of the town's waterworks and sewer department.

In May, Bush sentenced Chavers to six months in the Autauga Metro Jail and also ordered him to pay $240,674.04 in restitution.

The remaining co-defendant, Ernest Terry Stoudemire, also of Autaugaville, is scheduled to go on trial Oct. 20, courthouse records show. He too was indicted on use of public office for personal gain and felony theft and theft by deception charges.

Stoudemire is alleged to have taken the other half of the donation in the Harmon case. Walthall also represents Stoudemire and said his client used the money to reimburse himself for uniforms and equipment he bought for the VFD out of his own pocket.

Stoudemire served as assistant fire chief while Chavers was fire chief and took over the chief's post after Chavers stepped down from the department.